A Tumultuous Decade of Sexual Exploration in 1950's Paris
Abroad: An Expatriate's Diaries 1950-1959 by Harriet Sohmers Zwerling
In her vivid new memoir “Abroad: An Expatriate’s Diaries,
1950-1959,” the writer Harriet Zwerling recounts a decade living in France,
chronicling her numerous love affairs and the heady intellectual explosion in
postwar Europe. The diaries are a turbulent coming-of-age story as well as a
sexual awakening among the bohemians, writers and painters of Paris.
Harriet was 21 when she arrived in Paris with $200 in her
pocket. A six-foot-tall brunette from New York City, she immersed herself in
the cafes and bars, finding a tribe of young artists. Moving from cheap hotels
to rented rooms with the toilet in the hall, Harriet and other seekers try to
find themselves and their art. There is the heady mixture of euphoria and
despair over romantic and sexual entanglements.
Zwerling’s first affair is with the Swedish painter Sven
Blomberg, who takes her virginity. Their prospects for long-term love are
quickly stymied when Sven gives her the clap, then tries to deny that he was
unfaithful.
In a trip back to New York, Harriet meets the Cuban-American
temptress Irene Fornes, who seduces her, giving Harriet satisfying sex with
“her little thief’s hands.”. Irene eventually winds up in Paris with Harriet in
what quickly degenerates into an emotionally abusive relationship, interspersed
with passionate sex, jealousy and rampant infidelity.
Harriet’s diaries have copious amounts of sex, and she is
often in search of the ultimate orgasm, where she finds on another visit to New
York, with a lunk-head of a man named Peter in Hell’s Kitchen. who has a big
penis.
Along the way, Harriet hangs out with future American
literary greats like the poet John Ashbery, who is in a self-imposed exile in
Paris. She parties with Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, during their “Beat
Hotel” period. Harriet’s lover Irene would also wind up becoming a famed New
York playwright.
Harriet’s affairs with women make the diaries sing. Harriet
falls hard for the sculptor Romaine Lorquet, but the love affair is marred by
the fact that she is Sven’s girlfriend, and he insists on several unpleasant ménage
a trois with the two lovers. In the course of a decade, Sven evolves into a
pathetic figure, moping around as Harriet and Romaine fall in love, occasionally
threatening to kill himself.
At the end of her diary, Harriet renews her affair with
Susan Sontag, who would later become the formidable American
philosopher-novelist. Harriet seduced Susan at Berkeley in 1949 when Susan was
16. In 1957, Susan abandons a Fulbright fellowship in London to move in with
Harriet in Paris. From the beginning it is an unhappy affair, full of fights,
verbal abuse and mediocre sex. Through Harriet’s diary, Susan Sontag the
intellectual ice queen of the late 20th century is portrayed as just
an awkward young woman in a miserable relationship.
As a sexual rebel in 1950s Paris, Harriet paints a striking
portrait of a tumultuous decade spent abroad. There are good lovers, more bad
ones, the occasional orgy and a fistfight or two.
Towards the end of her stay in Paris, while being immersed
in multiple sexual affairs that are
supplemented with casual pickups of both men and women, Harriet takes stock of
Europe as a lover and as an American: “I am starting to feel that Europe for me,”
writes Harriet, “is something like homosexuality—a fantastically exciting
detour, an unforgettable addiction—but not real.”
(Harriet's previous collection "Notes of a Nude Model"...cover painting is a nude of Harriet done around 1960)
(Harriet's previous collection "Notes of a Nude Model"...cover painting is a nude of Harriet done around 1960)
Back in New York City in 1959, Harriet eventually set aside
her writing for almost five decades, becoming a New York City schoolteacher. In
2003, she published a collection of autobiographical stories called “Notes of a
Nude Model.” The Paris diaries sat neglected in the bottom of various closets
until she spent six years editing them before they were published this
April. In a one paragraph coda at the
end, Harriet channels Edith Piaf in assessing her own life.
“Now, I am in my eighties,” writes Harriet Sohmers Zwerling.
“ I read these pages with fascination, surprise and a certain nostalgia,
overjoyed by the realization that, in them, there is nothing to regret…”
--Dylan Foley
(ABROAD: An Expatriate’s Diaries 1950-1959 by Harriet
Sohmers Zwerling. Spuyten Duyvil, $18)
